A day in the life of a social media manager

“So you just get paid to make TikToks???”

No, I don’t. I get paid to scroll TikTok…

Just kidding.

But what does a typical day for a Social Media Manager look like?

Here we go

Get to work (WFH desk or office desk) and open my laptop. Caffeine.

Check through my emails to make sure there’s nothing that needs actioning immediately.

Scroll through LinkedIn, Threads or Instagram looking for any newsworthy posts or social media updates to share with the team or my clients.

Quick scroll through TikTok for any new trends or trending sounds – I will most likely have passively done this on the commute to work already :).

Make a plan for the day for all clients, and update existing to-do plans.

Meetings and chats with the team about anything fun you’ve seen on social for your own personal enjoyment, or something that would be cool to explore with one of your clients.

Now for the ‘doing’

Build a paid plan in Meta for one client, before sharing for sign off and going live.

Copywriting for first client. Whilst doing this, I’m already visualising the asset that will work with it.

Maybe a quick daydream about lunch.

Brief in design team for new assets to go with the copywriting I just did.

Meetings with team and/or clients. Meetings with clients and team are so important for a collaborative working relationship, the clue is in the name… social media manager.

Community management – this is where we do actually get to scroll social media, but we’re also engaging with the community as if we’re the brand personified. While we do this, we’re also making a mental note of trends, what our competitors are doing, and what kind of posts are gaining traction. Community management is also the time when we spot the most influencers or creators that we could approach for our brands.

More copywriting. This can sometimes be a block of hours in one go, or broken up into 1 hour slots between different clients dependent on how much needs powering through.

Catch up with the Research and Insights Manager for some data I need.

Do some performance reporting with the data that has been shared

More meetings.

If I’m not under a tight deadline, but I have a chunky piece of strategy work to do, I typically like to get all my smaller tasks done during the day, and then save a 2.5 hour block of time to get my teeth stuck into a big job like this. Notifications paused, AirPods in for pure concentration.

Last 5 minutes… make a plan for tomorrow and log my time.

Home time

Life as a social media doesn’t necessarily stop dead in it’s tracks as soon as you’ve left the office. I’m always on social, so I pretty much always have my phone in my hand, and I can’t help but have the wheels turning when I spot a new trend. But I do allocate an hour of my evening at home for my own TikTok time, I’m just not getting paid for scrolling then.

.

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